Run All Night

For F*** Magazine

RUN ALL NIGHT

Director : Jaume Collet-Serra

Cast : Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman, Ed Harris, Vincent D'Onofrio, Boyd Holbrook, Genesis Rodriguez, Common, Bruce McGill, Holt McCallany

Genre : Action/Crime

Run Time : 114 mins

Opens : 12 March 2015

Rating : NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language)

Liam Neeson goes from training the Dark Knight to running all night in this crime thriller. Neeson plays Jimmy Conlon, an aging hitman who used to work for crime boss Shawn Maguire (Harris). Shawn has supposedly reformed, and refuses to do business with drug dealers who are brought to him by his son Danny (Holbrook). It just so happens that Jimmy’s son Mike (Kinnaman), a limousine driver, is hired by Danny and witnesses a deal go horribly awry. Jimmy ends up killing Danny to save Mike, which leads to Shawn ordering that both father and son be killed in retaliation. Mike resents his father for the strain that being a hitman put on their relationship, but the duo have to stick together if they want to survive this long, brutal night.  

            Run All Night marks the third collaboration between Liam Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra, who also helmed Unknown and Non-Stop. Neeson claims that this will be his last action-centric leading role in a while. As cool as the actor always is, he is very much in danger of being a caricature of himself, if the Taken memes still all over the internet are anything to go by. Unfortunately, even though it’s meant to be more dramatic and character-driven than the Taken movies, Run All Night is still a let-down. Collet-Serra intends for it to be a gritty 70s-style crime flick, set in a grimy, misty New York City during the Christmas season over 16 hours. However, the scene transitions are Google Maps-style CGI camera moves, swooping out of one street, up over the city, and right into another. This comes off as nothing more than a jarring stylistic flourish, supposedly to disguise how surprisingly boring the film ends up being.

            The story is a predictable one – an ex-hitman must wade back into the muddy waters of his former life when things get personal. That logline can also be used to describe last year’s John Wick. Where that movie was surprisingly inventive, original and stylish, Run All Night is, well, a more run of the mill affair. The two relationships at its core are the personal connection between an enforcer and his old boss/long-time friend and between said enforcer and his estranged son. Brad Ingelsby’s screenplay strains to make this more than your typical father-son action movie team-up – the relationship isn’t amusingly dysfunctional, it’s downright toxic. And yet, it’s just not sufficiently compelling, some moments unintentionally funny rather than dark and dramatic. During the first half of the film, when Jimmy and Shawn wistfully reminisce about their youth, it’s meant to set up this deep bond that will inevitably be shattered over the course of the film, but it feels more like filler than anything else.

                Liam Neeson grimaces, wields a gun and talks tough through gritted teeth - daring, uncharted territory for the actor. We all love Liam Neeson but especially coming on the heels of the dismal Taken 3, it’s very easy to see why audiences are getting tired of this character type. Joel Kinnaman is good here as a clean-cut family man who wants nothing to do with the dangerous, seedy world which his father was a part of. He’s certainly less annoying than Jai Courtney’s Jack McClane in A Good Day to Die Hard. Alas, the clash of titans that is Liam Neeson vs. Ed Harris is something of a let-down. When all is said and done, it feels like Harris hasn’t really done all that much throughout the film, even though he has a substantial role. Harris is an unsung old-school cinematic badass, so seeing him go toe to toe with the old-school cinematic badass du jour should be more of an event. The macho friends-turned-enemies plot is undercut by what can be interpreted as homoerotic undertones between the two characters. Common shows up as an ice-cold bespectacled assassin; his night-vision eyepiece and high-powered pistol equipped with a laser sight likely referencing the first Terminator movie. He provides the best thrills of the film.  

            Run All Night is too predictable and contrived to work as an engrossing crime drama but also lacks the over-the-top action spectacle required to make it successful as a piece of escapist entertainment, falling into an uncomfortable no man’s land. It’s sturdily-constructed, shot well and solidly acted all around, but it has nothing to distinguish it from every other New York-set crime thriller out there.

Summary: Nowhere near as exciting as its title makes it sound, Run All Night never goes off the beaten crime thriller path. Its central trio do turn in strong performances, but even then the film can’t outrun the realm of the generic.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Hours

For F*** Magazine

HOURS

Director: Eric Heisserer
Cast:   Paul Walker, Genesis Rodriguez, Nick Gomez, Judd Lormand, Michelle Torres, Kerry Cahill, Shane Jacobsen
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Run Time: 97 mins
Opens: 9 January 2014
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language)

It’s an often tragic fact of life that Mother Nature isn’t to be trifled with. Catastrophic disasters regularly rear their heads, wreaking unfathomable damage. Southeast Asia has just emerged from Typhoon Haiyan, which caused immense devastation in the Philippines in particular. In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck Eastern North America; the most significant number of deaths occurring in New Orleans, Louisiana. The storm serves as the backdrop for writer/director Eric Heisserer’s survival thriller Hours.

Nolan Hayes (Walker) nervously waits in the hospital as his wife Abigail (Rodriguez) gives birth to their baby daughter, born five weeks premature. What should have been a joyous day turns into an ordeal for the new father as Hurricane Katrina sweeps into New Orleans, levee failures resulting in the flooding of the city. The power in the hospital cuts out and as it is evacuated, Nolan and the infant are left alone in the building. The only source of power for the neo-natal incubator needed to keep the baby alive? A malfunctioning generator which Nolan has to crank by hand every few minutes, desperately sustaining a fragile life.



Hours is Heisserer’s directorial debut, the screenwriter having co-written horror films A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) and Final Destination 5. He has come up with a high-concept premise for an intimate one-man-against-the-odds story, combining elements of a ticking clock thriller with the “triumph of the human spirit” aspect of a survival film. Also at play is the “Papa Wolf” trope, that a man would do anything for the safety of his daughter. It’s almost like Taken, except that the daughter is hours old and that it’s Hurricane Katrina as the threat in place of a nefarious human trafficking ring. The thing is, the daughter can’t be fully developed as a character here since, well, she’s a new-born, leaving the character of the father to do all the dramatic heavy lifting.

Unfortunately, Heisserer is not entirely sure how to develop the premise and there are creaks evident in the story’s structure. Nolan’s fight to save his baby girl is interspersed with flashbacks that attempt to flesh out the relationship he shared with his wife before this incident, but they are heavily expository. The film does become something of a grind, falling into a pattern of “discover obstacle, overcome obstacle, go back to crank the generator, talk to the baby and deliver exposition”. We are also brought up to speed with real news footage spliced somewhat clumsily into the film. However, the last act of the film does get interesting and there is just enough for audiences to get invested in.

Hours is squarely Paul Walker’s film to carry, the late actor spending most of its running time as the only person on screen (apart from the infant). It is especially sobering to see the recently-deceased Walker in a film with themes of mortality and survival and he acquits himself relatively well. He is charming and watchable but sufficiently intense and exhausted when the film calls for it. Unfortunately, even though this is one of his best performances, one can’t help but feel that an actor of greater stature would fit the part better. Carrying a movie this emotionally and physically draining is no mean feat and Walker does visibly struggle at times.

Director of photography Jaron Presant lenses the film beautifully, emphasizing the eeriness of the deserted hospital with lots of low angles down long corridors and slow push-ins, contrasted with the warm lighting of the incubator room. Fans of Eight Below will be delighted at the introduction of a loveable German Shepherd late in the film, but beyond the dog, Nolan doesn’t get to interact with many other characters and Walker has to power through the occasionally-unwieldy script all by his lonesome. While Hours doesn’t quite gel, the simplicity of its narrative enhances the story’s emotional impact and Paul Walker does give it his all.

SUMMARY: Hours doesn’t fully deliver on a promising concept but has its moments of heartfelt earnestness and is a decent film to remember Paul Walker by.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong